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Torture States Love Using Spy Satellites On Their Own Country:

Sky snoops
August 19, 2007
Baltimore Sun

Should have seen this one coming.

Once the federal government had rationalized its authority to violate the privacy of Americans by tapping their phones, reading their e-mail, surveying their library selections and poking through their bank records, it was only a matter of time before the Department of Homeland Security would point spy satellite cameras intended for foreign enemies into the private lives of Americans as well.

Indeed, the country is becoming so inured to the Big Brother tactics of the Bush administration, news of this intrusive new eye in domestic skies has provoked little outrage. Congress has apparently given the plan its blessing, totally abdicating its oversight role.

[...]

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Congress has signed off on this expanded use of spy satellites and provided funding for it to begin this fall. An aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed the committee was aware of the program and was monitoring it. Yet, there appears to have been no plan to make it public until The Wall Street Journal broke the story last week.

Congressional acquiescence in violating the freedom of innocent Americans not to be spied upon by their government is outrageous - but somehow not surprising coming from a group of Democratic-led lawmakers who recently got rolled by President Bush on the issue of domestic wiretapping without court approval.

The Democratic Party is handling their knife-edge majority in the Senate in the worst way possible, not just from a political standpoint - where they continue jumping up and down on the fractured remnants of the dust of their credibility with crap like this - but from a standpoint of duty-to-country-and-Consitution. They have no such excuse in the House, where the majority is slim, but not so slim as that. By appeasing the Liebermans who enable the authoritarian Republican Party, they actively enable that party's authoritarian agenda.

In my opinion, the Democratic Party should call Lieberman's bluff, and if they lose the Senate for another year and a half, that's - well, it's not fine, but it's better having the Senate and still losing, particularly in a chamber where you can stop anything with 40 votes. Then actually fight this crap in the House, really fight, really stop approving more of this crap, and maybe they could start earning back a reputation as a party that either cares about... anything, while - just maybe - being a little more effective. The alternative - the one they are pursuing now - makes them as damaging on these fronts as the GOP, as they stop nothing, and, by stopping nothing, help institute the Republican torture-and-surveilence state as the new normal. Perhaps Karl Rove actually resigned because, really, there wasn't anything left for him to do. Does the "permanent majority" really have to refer to the GOP by name, or can it include the enablers?

But, of course, I am a fool, unable to see that the Democratic Party is Our Only Hope, and that it will, someday, eventually, later, when it's safe, do the Right Thing.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Somebody needs to find the North Hollow files that the Rovemeister has on this bunch of milquetoast we have for a Congress, and either send'em to the New York Times or burn'em.

There aren't going to be new parties until somebody charismatic enough to lead a full majority shows up, and frankly that person, don't care who it is, scares me. Anything less throws the election into the House and Senate, and you're back to square one.

We're gonna have to work this out the hard way, within the states and by beating the snot out of our own Congresscritters or drafting new ones to run agin'em. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will we get a velvet revolution quickly. Anything faster will take a shooting war, and I for one don't want that if we can do it bloodlessly in a reasonable amount of time.

And the DNC isn't our only hope; thankfully, several of the last few principled so-and-so's left in the Elephants are actually running this time. I think the best declared candidate so far *is* a Democrat (Obama)... but for once I do not think this election will be a total disaster if he loses.

I'm not sure how to do it and be fair, but I think it ought to be a misdemeanor to vote for a measure which is later found to be unconstitutional on civil rights grounds... and a third conviction on this charge is a felony, the penalty for which is simply the usual collateral side effects of being a felon: Loss of civil rights and the right to hold public office.